Tuesday, June 9, 2015

When I was a reference librarian there was a man who suddenly began calling himself Krystal and demanded, from that point on, everyone refer to him as a she because now she was a woman. Nothing about him
had changed except this pronoun. I found that odd but fine with me. Then, to my
confusion Krystal stated,” I’m a woman just like you.”

How dare anyone make assumptions or claim to know anything
of who I am without talking to me!I have not now nor ever possessed a “woman’s
brain” whatever that’s supposed to mean. To me “womanhood” is a nebulous and
ridiculous concept. Yes, I have female sex organs but I’ve never experienced any
emotional attachment to them. I have been disparaged, discriminated against,
discouraged, threatened, molested and undermined for this female body all my
life. I have never been called “courageous” for undergoing this abuse. It is
just considered normal.

And as a woman who is attracted to other women, I’ve been
ridiculed, fired from jobs and beaten by strangers. If I had a dollar for every
time someone said “are you a boy or a girl or called me sir, I’d be a
millionaire. I have come to answer, “It’s none of your business since I have no
desire to sleep with you.”

The New York Times front page article by Elinor Burkett posits
an interesting take on the MTF transition. She asks what if someone who always
considered himself a black man in a white man’s body chemically increased the
melanin in his skin and braided his hair? Would he be lauded as courageous and
embraced by the black community?

I am a human being who has been relegated to life in a
woman’s body. I don’t feel like a woman or wish to be a man. My brain is full of
all kinds of things based on my experience. I’d prefer to have been treated as neutral
and allowed to develop my full human potential. What I am capable of accomplishing has
nothing to do with the shape of my body. I respect everyone and deserve to be
accorded that same respect. Others are not allowed to re-define and rewrite my life
experience due to their perceptions of my age, race, identity, appearance or anatomical arrangement.

I have no intention of interfering in personal decisions people make for themselves. Changing gender falls into this
category. Choice, personal selection, privacy, freedom of self-definition,
these are all rights and protections I will not violate. But everyone
has the right to define themselves. So do what you like to yourself, but keep your assumptions and pre-judgments off my body!